How Do You Heal Perfectionism?
The Perfectionism Trap – And Some Simple Steps to Avoid It
There’s a fine line between productive diligence and crippling perfectionism. Focusing on improvement, advancement and sound decision-making is a good thing. But things start to get dicey when an aversion towards making mistakes takes over. We’ve come up with a few tips to help you avoid the perfectionism trap.
Many of our clients have very high expectations of themselves and their decisions. When flawlessness and perfect results become the only acceptable outcome, a sense of pressure develops that is more destructive than helpful.
A study in the Journal of Counseling Psychology reveals that perfectionists are more vulnerable to depression. Perfectionists strive for a constant state of perfection and control. A feeling of worthlessness is created when this isn’t achieved. As a result, even higher goals are set with the intention of counteracting this feeling. What may also happen, is that the feeling of failure overshadows any successes or positive experiences, which leads to a decline in motivation.
In order to avoid the perfectionism trap, try taking these supportive steps.
- Explore how you can accept yourself even with all of your imperfections. As a way to open yourself up to this, think about how you can appreciate a good friend, regardless of his or her accomplishments or mistakes.
- Take a closer look at your role models and ideals: are they truly perfect in every single way? Are your chosen ideals truly desirable states of being?
- Try lowering your need for control step by step. It helps to start small, for example by delegating a task that doesn’t feel very important to you.
- Put your results into perspective: Have all of your successes up until now truly happened because of luck or circumstances? It can be helpful to take note of which actions were necessary to create your triumphs up until now.
- Play around with doing less. One way of doing this is by dedicating a day each week where you purposely don’t do things one hundred percent. This can lead to the powerful realization that the world will keep turning even when you’re not perfect all of the time.
Wishing you wellbeing,
Ramona Beck
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Written by: Ramona Beck
Translation: Leah Salinas